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Originally Posted by undercoverbrother
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Personally I think that at this point we shouldn't be looking at the Peacekeeping requirements in any of the nations that Justin is drooling over.
I mean people have this stupid romantic image of lightly armed Canadians in blue berets in helmets driving in lightly armed glistening white jeeps to restore the peace while bravely being willing to sacrifice themselves.
But the truth is somewhat darker. First of all there is a lack of desire by the UN to actually fight for peace. Instead they come out with confusing rules of engagement and refuse to give UN troops the equipment and order of battle needed to actually create and enforce a peace. Second of all, Peacekeeping is the ultimate in terms of public relations, we're going to try to integrate troops from different nations of the world to work together to enforce the peace. Instead you get a confusing and badly thought of command structure and all you end up with is soldiers frozen by inertia.
So why does the UN fail. Because they fail to realize a couple of things.
1) This isn't a nation versus nation battlefield anymore. The peace keeping missions that Canada's government is drooling to get involved in are based around ruthless insurgent groups that will more then likely band together to kill UN troops before going back to kill each other. We're talking roadside bombs, and snipers and suicide bombers and civilian massacres here. The UN is not configured nor ruthless enough to enforce the peace in this kind of environment.
2) That the day of peacekeeping is over, its a failed concept because of the gutlessness of the UN. They don't understand the modern battlefield but they think their reputation will carry the day. That a General can talk to two leaders on the opposite sides and convince them to lay down their arms. Unfortunately the truth is that Peacekeeping has to become Peace Enforcement. You basically should be arming peacekeepers like an army instead of like lightly armed beat cops. You have to have a heavy club that you can swing at whichever side breaks the peace and have the means and the desire to do it. In other words you send in a armored battalion and special forces and planes and everything and you warn both sides to knock it off or you will rain holy hell on both sides, wipe them out arrest their leaders and deliver them for War Crimes tribunals.
If Justin has this desire do do Peacekeeping then he either has to inform the UN that he's only interested in doing it if its a Canada only mission, and that the UN will pay to arm the battlegroup appropriately and the chain of command ends with the leader in the field.
On top of that, he has to recognize that any UN peacekeeping mission isn't going to be smiling troops in white jeeps, this is going to be nasty and protracted and that Canada's Military is going to probably pay a pretty large butchers bill in terms of money and deaths. Neither side in these areas is interested in peace, they're interested in annihilation, genocide and taking over and installing a government based on their viewpoints.
If we aren't going to go in with a willingness to fight properly for the innocents caught in the middle, if we're going in and we're going to stand by while people are slaughtered and the UN can't come up with a proper rules of engagement then we should say no thanks we're out.